I shut down my computer often (and don't discourage me on that). Give me ideas on how to boot Gentoo as fast as possible.

My own suggestions:

- Loading modules seem quite long. I think it is because of "modules-update" and awking the whole modules file. If we cached results of the awk, and skipped modules-update, it should be faster (haven't tried).

However, without modules-update, forgetful people (like me) will forget to do so. But it wouldn't be required often, am I right?

- DHCP requests can take a few seconds, especially with certain NICs --> ifplugd.

Lastly, is it possible to offload Scanning of font directories (for XFS), modules-update (which would ideally cache ALSA and modules.autoload) to runtime? Perhaps in cron? The slow startup can also be attributed to all the BASH activities (source -ing). Anything to speed that up?

----------------------------

WinXP boots 1.5 times as fast as by Gentoo, the main reason for this post. I do not want to cheat by making bash "fork" using "&". I want the error messages, if any.

This allows multiple services to startup simaltaneously, instead of waiting for each one to start one after another, though some services are dependant on others, and still have to wait for their dependant services to start. This helps in most services by a barely noticeable difference, but really helps with DHCP. I even moved net.eth0 from default to the boot runlevel, so it's finished starting by the time any other services need it._________________"we should make it a law that all geeks have dates" - Linus

in a word, yes, the boot also gets special treatment by rc-update, basically it will warn you before removing anything from the boot runlevel._________________This post has been over explained for newb-informing purposes.

in a word, yes, the boot also gets special treatment by rc-update, basically it will warn you before removing anything from the boot runlevel.

Is there any rules/suggestions in which runlevel certain services should run? I've encountered tutorials and howto's that differs in their rc-update recommendations... For example the shorewall firewall initialization._________________Don't bother!

I`ve commented out the modules-update line in /etc/init.d/modules, and run it manually when I upgrade my kernel or change something with my modules config. Don`t know if its a proper fix, but it speeds up my boot.

I`ve commented out the modules-update line in /etc/init.d/modules, and run it manually when I upgrade my kernel or change something with my modules config. Don`t know if its a proper fix, but it speeds up my boot.

Working on some code to preload X/GNOME startup-related data into memory during boot. Booting on a Linux machine takes longer than with XP, and that just plain sucks. The preloading I am working on should prevent the pathological seeky read of many smalls files that occurs during desktop bring up, by doing that I/O in the background, earlier, and not serializing everything into I/O wait hell.

Someone might find that interesting in terms of getting a usable machine up sooner rather than later. I'm sure the technic can be used for KDE as well with some adaptions (for those who prefer that)._________________Proud to be a 22 year old Infidel, GNOME lover and member of LIK.

Linux boots damn fast on my machine, i havent timed it but i can boot an unoptimised XP in 20 seconds
I'm gonna try a couple of the tweaks here when i get home
markfl_________________Life it seems, will fade away
Drifting further every day

The boot time sux. Everytime I want to boot the computer to surf the net, I have to decide between 10+seconds of waiting (WinXP) and 30+seconds (you-know-what).

And last of all, KDE takes quite some time to start (from login screen to 100%), haven't timed, but
definitely around 5 seconds slower.

Is is because the structure of the Gentoo booting system is just plain slow? It is like bash, bash and more bash, init scripts under runscripts.sh under bash and more bash??!!

i think the problem is not bash.

Windows xp to give the impression of a quick start, start the equivalent of xdm, before all other services.

so while you log in windows xp, the os is still loading other services, that's why sometimes windows xp is not responsive when you start an application right after login, because this app is waiting for a service not yet loaded.

I heard it's not easy to do the same on linux, because of getty that must be started before xdm.

But in theory we could start xdm, right after network, and then load things like
mail, sshd, apache, ftp, and so on._________________--
Seb aka "Mr Est"

you start exactly where you left. it's the same functionaly as "hibernate" in windows.

Actually, suspend-to-ram exists in windows too. In "hibernate" everything is saved to the hdd whereas in suspend-to-ram everything stays in memory. Suspend-to-ram is newer and faster but not supported by as many motherboards as hibernation.

I have parallel booting enabled, and eliminated modules-update from my init.d/modules.

Now, my box (Athlon 2000+, with 512 Mb RAM, 7200 RPM HDD), boots for 40 secs: it takes about 25-30 sec until X starts, then about 10 secs until the login window comes. After logging in, I have to wait for about 10 additional secs for KDE to start up. Interestingly, the first 5-7 secs of the booting is spent in checking the BIOS.

Window XP boots in 15 seconds until the login window and after logging in, one can start working almost instanteously.

So booting with WinXP is between 2x-3x faster then with Linux after tweaking...

So booting with WinXP is between 2x-3x faster then with Linux after tweaking...

I don't know about you guys but I think that is easily compensated by the fact that you don't have to reboot every six hours just to free up memory... And I always use the software suspend on my laptop... doesn't take more than 15 -20 secs to boot...

I think that is easily compensated by the fact that you don't have to reboot every six hours just to free up memory...

I don't know about that, however I almost never use XP. Still it shows. that there is potential for speeding things up. It also shows, that most time is spent in the real booting, not in setting up KDE, etc.

However, it would be interesting, if X would start up while connecting to net, starting up sshd,postgres, etc. I think it could help gaining some "precious" seconds...

- 5-6 seconds to grub (compaq screen...)
- ~30 seconds kernel+init (Without X, I would be able to login at this point)
- ~20 seconds for X+kdm to load
- ~25 seconds after login, KDE is 100% done and ready

- 5-6 seconds to grub (compaq screen...)
- ~30 seconds kernel+init (Without X, I would be able to login at this point)
- ~20 seconds for X+kdm to load
- ~25 seconds after login, KDE is 100% done and ready

So it takes me about 1min 20secs to boot and log in.

And no SWSUSP completely doesn't work on my machine...

I'm pretty sad about this actually.

Can't compare to XP since I dont dual boot.

I have the same scenario. A friend of mine has the same laptop model as I and he runs windows xp. I can tell xp takes a long time to boot (about 45s) due to the 4200 rpm hdd, but not as much as mine until kde finishes starting up.

If sw suspend worked, I would gladly use it.

I also have a desktop machine which I dual boot. Windows XP takes no more than 10s to show up the login screen, while KDE will take more than 20s to start initializing.